She was a huge influence on me. She’s one of the main reasons I took up photography. During a time when talking sex, even a little, was taboo, she showed that a woman could be beautiful, happy, seductive, sexy, bawdy and innocent all at once. She will be missed.
btw, as far as age goes, I’m 44 so it’s not only senior citizens who know Bettie. Go look on some forums for photographers or models, and you’ll quickly see the impact she had.

Bettie has a hairstyle named after her. She was the brunette antidote to the blonde bombshell. I think she’s classic. So no worries on the being “old” for knowing who she is. Half a zillion baby goff and emo girls have her hair.

I doubt if Bettie Page was as famous in the fifties as she became in the 80s and 90s. All of the original work I’ve seen her do was really cheap fetish films and photography club photos. I think she might have been the original model for the Vampira comics.

I first heard about Betty Page several years ago. Saw some old photos and was absolutely enchanted!

It may please you, PZ, to know that in the eclectic, hip, liberal town of Royal Oak, Michigan (just minutes away from my former my former residence) there was a gift store that sold all sorts of retro stuff – cardboard cut outs of James Dean, reproduction vintage lunch boxes (The Jetsons, Lost in Space, etc) and other such goodies.

I found out about Bettie Page probably through Harlan Ellison, when he raved about the comic The Rocketeer in the ’80s, when I was in high school (a character in Rocketeer was based on her). One of my best friends was a comic book nerd and the comics shops had lots of Bettie merch everywhere. A middle-aged guy I worked with was astonished I knew who Bettie Page was. I said, “I’m an 18-year-old guy who hangs out in comic books shops. Of course I know who Bettie Page is!” Many years later I got in trouble working in a bookstore when I ordered a beautiful book on her to stock; the oh-so-sensitive staff were quite taken aback by her fetish gear. They had no idea who she was. I’m hoping today they’re getting lots of orders for that book…

I was born in ’65, so she’s a little before my time, but since I hung out with rockabilly revivalists and other postpunk subculture types in the 80s, I learned about her around 20 years ago from people obsessed with 1950s pop culture. She was one of the 50s women rockabilly girls would try to dress like. I still haven’t seen the movie about her that came out a couple of years ago.

Despite being a youngin’ I knew Bettie Page. Heard about her through multiple sources by now. A psychology of human sexuality class, a friend, and a webcomic(Questionable Content, the main character’s mother is described on the cast page as “Marten’s mother, who was a former fetish queen a la Bettie Page and went by the stage name Veronica Vance…”)

The legendary Dave Stevens is responsible for her more recent fame. He’s the artist that did the Rocketeer comics, and several pin-up illustrations of her.
He had thought that she died years before (as was the rumour at the time). When he found out that she was still around, and not in good health, he decided to spend a significant amount of his time taking care of her.
Unfortunately, he passed away from cancer recently (far too young).
Perhaps she had a hard time with him gone. He had been taking care of her for quite some time.

Do I know who she is? Let’s see, I have a metal Bettie Page lunch box sitting above my computer. I also have a Bettie Page alarm clock that someone gave me for my birthday some years ago. Then there’s the calendar from 1975 (my birth year) where Page is the June (my birth month) photo that my mom’s boss gave me last year.

28 years old, and have had photos of her on my wall for nigh on ten years. Not knowing who she was (or even thinking she was a fictional character) isn’t so much a sign of youth, I think. It’s more likely to be a result of her not allowing any photographs after her retirement. In current celebrity culture, that pretty much is the same as not existing, being dead or being entirely fictional.

Here in Las Vegas, we have a Bettie Page store in one of the malls. I’m not sure if it’s a chain, or if there are any others around the world. The store sells all kinds of pin-up materials, paraphernalia, kitsch, memorabilia, anything they can sell that’s Bettie or pinup themed. It’s a pretty cool place, but I know I look like an out-of-place weirdo going there.

Heck, I’m 25 and I know who she is, and so did most of the people I went to high school with. Mostly because her photos are still super-sexy but retro enough that people’s parents didn’t throw them out.

I still have a cigarette case with a Bettie Page print on it, in fact. She was a beautiful and admirable icon.

The movie about Bettie from director Mary Harron and writer Guinevere Turner (“I Shot Andy Worhol” and “American Psycho”). Very good movie for those are interested in the lovely pin-up. The dvd has a good commentary track and a little 15min documentary on pin-ups. My library had a copy of it. Good Stuff.

I’ve known about Bettie Page since I was in my early teens (so, about twenty years now), but it was several years before I put the name to the image. And until I read your article, I didn’t know a thing about her history.

I’m 50 years old, but have know of the Betty Page icon since I used to flick through playboys and penthouses at the local newsagent – at age 15. Playboy had a resident artist that did classic drawings of her.

Anyone that isn’t aware of the ephemera of these people hasn’t studied history except in the textbooks. Gypsy Rose Lee claims she dragged the world out of The Great Depression and Mae West is both bad and better. A silent screen siren last seen in The Whales of August, somewhat ravaged by age was Lillian Gish. She was beautiful in her youth – prior to those self-sensorship laws hollywood imposed.

Betty should be up there with Marilyn and I suspect will “oustrip” her – she seems to hark back to Art Deco days and Cate Blanchett’s look in the last Indiana Jones movie borrows from Betty’s look.

These icons all pre-date me – so I commend those in their 20s that have taken the trouble to research some of these people. Remember too that these individuals were generally more interesting and colourful than the monarchs and politicians we learn about in school – and in the long run at least as influential.

I’m only 26 and I am just dumbfounded by the number of people posting who don’t know much about who Betty Page was! She was a sexual icon in her day, and is still revered by many to this day as such. Betty Page, along with Alfred Kinsey and others were a huge part of the sexual revolution of the 60’s.

Hell, I have a female friend who is younger than me that loves Bettie Page and collects every bit if Bettie Page merchandise that she can get her hands on.

Bettie was sex- positive before we had a word for what that was. She was a role model for fetish pride, for taking pleasure in bodies and in sex, for women proudly and cheerfully claiming their sexuality… way the hell before it was cool. She was shameless — not the wild, defiant, “fuck you and your shame” Jezebel sort of shameless (which I’m also fond of, don’t get me wrong), but the sort of shameless that doesn’t even see what there is to be ashamed of. She was always smiling and playful and full of radiant joy. (And even after she found religion and quit modeling, she never disavowed her erotic and fetish work or treated it like it was something to be ashamed of.)

It’s funny…my brain is a magnet for pop-culture b.s. I know names of characters from current television shows and the actors that play them, and I don’t even watch t.v.
Bettie Page is way more than the usual pop-culture B.S. A joyful person who did great, campy work that still pushes buttons today. I love that such an innocent looking face can make so many people blush, even decades later.
Needless to say, I’ve known of Bettie Page by image for most of my life, and by name since I stole my first Playboy at ten years old in 1983. One of the poster prints by Olivia is hanging, old and tattered, on my bedroom door.
I thought knowing about Bettie Page was required knowledge, in the U.S. at least! If not, it should be!

Betty put quite a few young boys through puberty, and ’til this day I still think she is one of the sexiest women I have ever seen…

Does anyone have pictures of Betty after the fact, when she became born again and all that? I heard an interview with her once, but it was audio only as she forbid cameras. Her voice was as rough as an old dirt road, and it was a shock to think of her beauty and hear that voice. I believe she was a heavy smoker…

People were pecking around it, but not explicitly. The Hot Topic retail chain had a huge thing to do with her pop culture revival, at least within the upper-middle-class ‘goth’ Generation Y demographic.

Sorry PZ, I was born in the ’50s and I’ve not heard of her. That may be because I’m Canadian and we’re usually a decade or so behind you guys.

Hmmm, I’m Canadian too. Perhaps this is why I seem to be one of the only 20 somethings that have never heard of her. She sounds like a fantastic lady though, and it’s too bad that this is how I’ve first heard about her.

Aw, Damn. Van Johnson has died as well. 92 is pretty impressive, though. Guess I’ll go look and see if I still have “Thrill of a Romance”, “A Guy Named Joe”, or “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” on VHS somewhere.

I think the amazing thing about Bettie Page is that, even after all these years, her pictures are still so hot that they make me want to play with myself – nobody else from back then has that effect on me.

I’m pretty sure no one else has mentioned this, but Bettie was also known for her historic photo shoot with an African-American man on a beach. Until then, I believe there’d really been no biracial sexy photography (whatever the best terminology is!). She talked about it on a radio interview I heard with her about seven or eight years ago. It was sweet the way she talked about it. She really did have this amazing innocence that was just like, “I don’t see what the big deal is”. I think the way that her life went was just a sign of the times.

She’ll always be an icon, not just for how she looked on film, but for her spirit and all the barriers she broke down. Few people have had such a profound effect on me.

I found some magazines hidden in my parents dresser drawer. Their pages featured pinups, all kinds of scantily clad girls, but one stood out for me, Betty Page. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and although I was barely pubescent at the time, I longed to look just like Betty Page when I grew up. RIP Betty.

Amongst most of everyone here, I guess I’m a whippersnapper at 28, and I’ve heard of her.

I was just a tinge saddened that no news agency ran a recent photo (thanks PixelFish #25, for the 2003 pic), but I guess everyone has that one thing in their life that will be referenced for the rest of your life.

I’m 36 and I’ve known who she was for ages. She’s always been something of a goth/rockabilly icon, especially with that black hair with the bangs that so many goth chicks do (including myself). I even have a calendar of her, and an alarm clock with one of Olivia’s airbrush portraits of her on it. My 23-year-old brother has a bowling shirt with her on it, and a poster of her holding a whip. She was such a beautiful girl and seemed happy and sweet from the short glimpses of her I’ve seen on old promo films by Irving Klaw. She will be greatly missed at my house!

Bettie Page appears to have achieved a late life renascence. One of my college students (late teen or early tween) was sporting a T-shirt with a voluptuous female figure on it. I didn’t immediately recognize it, but I felt comfortable enough with the student to ask: “Is that a Vargas pin-up or a Petty girl?” He shook his head, perhaps a bit disappointed in me: “No, it’s Bettie Page.” I wasn’t playacting when I nodded my head, because I had certainly heard of her before, but I was surprised that my student was a fan. It seems clear that Bettie Page is an enduring icon.

I’d never heard of her. Following PZ’s link, her life as a whole is a pretty sad story (being “born again”, three divorces, paranoid schizophrenia), and I don’t get what makes her “an icon of the sexual revolution”. Pin-up photos are almost as old as photography.

Don’t know her. But then, I live under a rock in the Netherlands. I won’t divulge my age, except to say that all the young people haven’t fully given up convincing me that I’m not old yet. Anyway, I watched a few clips and all I thought was ‘Was dat ‘t nou?’ I’m severely underwhelmed. She was not particularly sexy and to those of you who say she wasn’t trashy: well, I think she was, a bit more than slightly so.

Heh. I’m another 30-something with a Bettie-crush. A lot of us younger folks are familiar with Bettie Page. We like Veronica Lake, too. Certainly everyone in my cohort in college (late 90’s) was familiar with Bettie. Veronica was a little less popular. Of course, we were also a bunch of queer alternative religious free-thinker types.

Weirdly, I’ve encountered a fair number of older people (50+) who claim to never have heard of either.

I hit 55 this year, and I’m pretty certain that I’d never heard of her until a few years ago, when I watched the movie The Notorious Bettie Page – but then I’m an ancient Brit, and we tend to forget our own history on a regular basis, let alone anyone else’s…

I don’t think age is factor for knowing of her, as much as lifestyle is.
Film majors/video store clerks, punk/rockabilly types, and pop culture junkies have worshipped her for years. Stores on South St. Philadelphia (where people went before Hot Topic), have sold merchandise featuring her since the 80’s.
She’s an icon of American alternative culture.

26 here and I’ve known who Bettie Page was for years. There’s a few great documentaries about her (HBO ran one a few years ago) and a decent Bio Flick called The Notorious Bettie Page starring Gretchen Mol. E! True Hollywood ran a piece on her that actually got her found again. Dark Horse Comics also has a graphic novel or two.

Late to the party, but I just drove past Seattle’s famous Betty Page House. It’s next to the main N-S freeway, and has been written-up in the paper, complete with an interview with the artist, but a pic is enough: http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/rnr/955947773.html

There will be plenty to learn about Bettie when her authorized documentary — her parting gift to fans — comes out during the second half of 2010. Meanwhile, check out the film’s website and Forum: http://www.bettiepagemovie.com

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